Do you know how to attract the best talent and future leaders?
Deloittes fourth Millennial survey, Mind the gaps The 2015 Deloitte Millennial Survey, is out and the overall result is clear: the focus on businesses roles in society is changing. The 2015 survey shows that Millennials consider business to be underperforming in regards to improving livelihoods and having a social and environmental benefit. A staggering 75% of Millennials believe that businesses should focus more on improving society, and less on their own agendas. In my opinion, the data leaves little doubt. If companies want to attract talent going forward, a strong social purpose and a strategic approach is absolutely key.
The focus of future leaders
Millennials are reflecting on questions, such as Are businesses only interested in their own agenda? Do they behave ethically? Is their impact in line with expectations of what they could and should achieve? and thereby signalling to the worlds business leaders that business should be done with purpose. The survey also identifies a leadership gap between how Millennials would prioritize if they were leaders of their organizations, and how they perceive current senior leadership teams to be prioritizing. As an example, Millennials would emphasize their companies contributions to local communities and wider society in which they operate to a much larger extent. Compared to current leaders, they would place less emphasis on personal reward and short-term financial goals.
This shift in focus is interesting, and goes to show that CSR and sustainable initiatives are becoming increasingly important for management to seriously and strategically consider, in order to meet the expectations of stakeholders, and in this case, our future talent.
Millennials definition of leadership
When Millennials were asked which businesses currently show the strongest leadership, the key words that echoed through all the answers were ethical behaviour, sustainable innovation, caring for the communities you are involved in and good governance.
Besides behaving responsibly and actively taking part of improving society, Millennials highlighted fair treatment of employees, job creation and profit generation with a sense of purpose as important for them. Evidently, Millennials have not forgotten the bottom line, but they are expecting corporations to generate profits responsibly. Thus, the clear message to current business leaders being: find your business case, ensure integration of CSR into your core functions, engage your employees, and reap the benefits that follow, such as enhanced job satisfaction, attraction of the best employees and a better corporate image. It seems to me like a very clear message.
The survey represents 29 countries and more than 7.800 Millennials. All participants were born after 1982, have obtained a college or university degree, are employed full time and predominantly work in large private-sector organizations (100+ employees).
Find the survey here
